It may not have access to the precognitive psychics featured in the 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report, but a new city parole force working with Penn's criminology center is trying to prevent potential murderers from killing.
Penn's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, in partnership with the First Judicial District of Philadelphia, is in the process of launching a homicide prevention unit that will try to determine which paroled felons are most likely to commit murder and assign them special parole officers.
These five parole officers - trained and assigned by the new unit - will keep a close watch on selected criminals through weekly meetings and frequent contact to prevent them from becoming repeat offenders.
The $1 million program, which is still in the hiring and training phases, will select the felons based on names and statistics from the Adult Probation and Parole Department of Philadelphia.
Jerry Lee Center director Lawrence Sherman said that this department supervises the largest number of convicted offenders out of any agency in the city, but most of the criminals are not seen as likely to kill in the future.
Richard Berk, a professor of Criminology and Statistics, will provide much of the data analysis, Sherman said.
"Berk [will] find the needles in the haystack, the very few people on probation who will go on to commit a murder or attempted murder," Sherman said.
The center also intends to introduce a new model of electronic supervision - in which Philadelphia felons will go to probation centers and answer questions on a computer - for those lower-risk probationers who do not seem to represent a direct threat. Sherman said that he preferred this system in order to allow probation officers to directly handle more "serious crime prevention." He added that New York City uses this method for 75 percent of its parolees.
Officials at several other schools in similar urban environments say they have not implemented such programs, but added they would not be opposed to it.
"We don't have anything like [the homicide prevention unit] around this area - at the university or at the median area of the university," said Robert Mason, executive director of the South East Chicago Commission of the University of Chicago, which works to address neighborhood crime.
The university is located in the Hyde Park district of Chicago, which, while being ranked 14th out of 22 Chicago districts in terms of violent crime, still averages about four murders per year.
Georgetown and Columbia universities also do not have any pre-crime measures planned, though representatives at each said that they are interested in seeing the results of the Jerry Lee Center's program.
George Tita, professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, said that Penn's program sounds different from other crime prevention programs in that "it has added levels of statistical analysis."
He added that most crime prevention groups simply create offenders lists and try to educate people about local dangers.
Philanthropist Jerry Lee donated $500,000 for the project. The remaining $500,000 was split between the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency and the city.
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